You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!

Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.

Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.

Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

This is sort of a strange question and I guess I just wanted a little more clarification on it...

I have been using Slackware now for a while and have gone through several successful kernel builds using the great posts in the Slackware forum to help me out. I was assisting a co-worker today in updating the kernel on a SuSE 8.2 box from the 2.4.20 (SuSEfied) kernel to the latest stable, 2.4.25. We went through the process as it is documented here in the Slack section and all went well. I modded the GRUB settings so that I created a new entry and pointed to the correct vmlinuz version.

We then rebooted and that's when the fun started. When I selected the new kernel, things started scrolling by like normal and then suddenly the process stopped with the line "Kernel Panic: VFS: could not mount root fs on 03:06" (or something to that degree). After doing a little research on the web, I found a post on linuxforums where it was suggested that the "initrd" file is specific to the kernel image and that a new kernel image would need a new initrd by use of "mkinitrd". So, I tried it out, altered my GRUB configuration to point to the new initrd file and VOILA! I had a successfully booting 2.4.25 kernel.

So, now to my questions:

1) Is the use of "mkinitrd" SuSE specific?

2) When I build kernels in Slack, does a new initrd automagically get created in the process?